Service charge scrutiny
Q. There are 32 tenants in two blocks of apartments, with 16 apartments in each block. We all pay a communal charge of £63 a month to a property service company, a subsidiary of the firm that built the apartments. Most of us are pensioners, and we feel this is too much on top of the annual ground rent of £150. Is there anyone we can appeal to about these charges?
A. Ultimately you could buy the freehold to the flats, so you wouldn’t have to pay any more ground rent, and you could bring in a different management company or even manage the blocks yourselves. But these are drastic, and potentially very expensive, steps. You could also challenge the “reasonableness” of the service charge at a Leasehold Valuation Tribunal. But before doing any of these things you should ask to see summaries of the charges and inspect the accounts to see where and how your money has been spent. Many apartment owners, especially those on pensions, are unhappy with their service charges, but running a building can be an expensive business. The Leasehold Advisory Service website has a wealth of information on this subject.

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Deeds in a box
Q. My husband bought our house from Manchester council (although it wasn’t a council house) in 1986. He kept the deeds and other papers in a box at the solicitors, but my husband has now died and the solicitors have disappeared, having been taken over by a larger firm. I am now 75 with four children and would like to know what to do?
A. Fortunately you gave me your address, including postcode. I typed these details into the “Find a Property” section of the Land Registry website and hey presto! it confirmed that your title deed information is in fact held on file at the Land Registry. This is because your property was registered when you bought it, and it means that you don’t actually need the paper deeds. You (or your executors after your death) will be able to sell the house without them. If you want the original deeds for some reason it’s possible that the larger firm that took over your solicitors will still have them. They’re handy to refer to, but not essential where a property is registered.

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Clinging on to family home
Q. After my mother died I carried on living at home with my father to help him around the house etc. Unfortunately my father died last month and didn’t leave a will. I have brothers and sisters and obviously everything has to be split evenly between us, but I wondered whether they have a legal right to force me to move out, even though I would be a part owner of the property? They have their own places to live but I don’t have anywhere else to go.
A. You could offer to pay your brothers and sisters rent for their shares in the property, or even buy them out. Failing that you will probably have to move. If you don’t move out voluntarily your siblings would have to go to court to get you out. A court would look at various factors, but in a case like this where property is in joint ownership it will almost always make an order for it to be sold unless there is an “estoppel”. This is a legal principle that helps people who have acted to their detriment in reliance on a promise. You should see a solicitor to see whether this kind of argument can be deployed in your case.

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Chance to reclaim my land
Q. The previous owners of the house next door built part of their garage in my garden – presumably with the consent of the elderly couple who used to own my house. The current owners of the house next door have knocked the garage down and plan to replace it on the same site. Can I now reclaim this land by reinstating the original fence?
A. If the garage was there for 12 years or more prior to 2003 (when the law changed) your next door neighbours will be able to claim that the land their garage stands on was acquired by themselves and their predecessors by adverse possession. Whether or not their title plan includes the land it would be expensive and almost certainly fruitless to try to recover it at this stage if the garage has been there for a long period of time. You should have mentioned this discrepancy to your solicitor when you bought the house.

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Thanks to our son
Q. Our son has lent us quite a lot of money to buy our house. How would we go about having his name put on the title deeds, since we want to make sure he will benefit from the property in the long run?
A. Putting the house on the title could give rise to tax problems and it would be better for your son to take a charge over the property to secure the amount you owe him. This would help if you ever had to go into a care home since the local authority would only be able to take the value of your property net of the amount owed to your son into account.

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